The Red Oak Longbow PT. 1

I decided as my first project post Id do my red oak longbow. This is one of my most successful projects, and alot of fun. Basically Im making deadly weapons from some home improvement store lumber and glue. Before I begin I need to do a shout out. poor folks bows is a how to site about building bows at home. The site is spectacular, and well done. It is where I got my start making longbows, and I use alot of his methods. If you want to build a bow go to his site. Go ahead Ill wait right here for you.....................................Ok, back? Now Ill show you how I made my bow, its a long process so Im doing it in a few posts.

First I choose my wood. I go to a well known home store with alot of orange in its logo. Red oak 1x2 is my wood of choice, and I choose carefully. I will go through every board to find good ones. I do not compromise. If the 100 boards they have in stock dont cut it I go somewhere else. Compromising quality here is ending up with a face full of broken bow later. Im looking for 7 feet of board. I will use 1x4's if I have to. Theres just the extra step of ripping them in half. Im looking for a heavy board with wide rings in the cross section. It has to have a straight grain, and be straight as well. Noticed the table saw? I like to work by hand, but in this case precision is important. I could do this

without a table saw, but why? If the mountain men had table saws they would have used them. Besides there will be plenty of hand tool work in this project trust me. The saw is just a fast way to remove material youd otherwise have to rasp off. Now I have a good board I lop off a foot so I have a 6 foot section for my bow, the rest will be the riser. In the case of the photo I was forced to buy 6 foot boards, and have the guy at the store cut me a 2 foot section extra to make two risers from. The next step is ripping. I know that in the bows I make the thickest part will half an inch. The stock comes at 3/4. I rip the boards down to 1/2. Like I said you could carve these down after the fact to size if you had
to. I just prefer the ease of not spending 8 or 10 hours
rasping away at dusty wood. When the boards are ripped down I layout the limb dimensions. I use pretty much the same layouts as the fella in the website linked above. A 1/2 inch nock at the top, tapering 15 inches down the limb back to full width.

Limb layout is subjective, this has worked for me in the past so thats what I use. When the limb is laid out I use a jigsaw to remove some of the material. do not cut all the way to the line. I leave some slack so that I can go back with the rasp later and carve everything to a nice straight pleasing angle. While laying out the limb I also mark the exact center of the bow (36 inches if your math isnt good). I check my measurement from both ends to insure its even. Now remember that 1 foot section I took off before I ripped down? I cut it down again to 10 inches. This will be the final size of the riser. Then I mitre it 45 degrees on each end without taking off any length so that it is a trapezoid shape. Like so-----
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I measure to the exact center of the riser. I do this after I mitre just in case I knock off a 1/16, or so accidentally making the cut. The mitre as before is just a time saving measure, getting the riser closer to a finished shape. At this point Im ready to glue the riser. As a rule I use the ripped side of the bow as the belly, or the side facing you when you shoot. The reason I do this is I dont want flaws from the sawing to show in the back, and possibly raise a splinter. I take some sandpaper and I make the surface as smooth as possible to make sure I have a good joint with the riser.I spread glue on both surfaces and I clamp. I make sure to line up the marks I made on both pieces so that everything is glued dead center. Now its time to give the glue time to dry. 24 hours is fine, and after that it will be time to break out the rasps. In the next post Ill start the carving.